It was killed as an easy boon for idiotic environmentalist groups (the german green party is one of the few which at times reached relevant levels of representation), which have done more against the environment than for it. It which was also supported by local trade groups as Germany has huge deposits of lignite (whuch is basically the worst coal available).
In no small part following greenpeace’s nonsensical switch from military to civilian nukes in a bid for relevance most environmentalist groups and green parties hate nukes with a passion.
Decommissioning plants you could keep in running order is financially idiotic since you’ve already performed the vast majority of the investment.
Environmental concerns causing cancer in Europe has a bit of precedence - see the push for diesel engines in passenger cars. These reduce carbon dioxide emissions (which act at the global level) at the expense of higher particulate and nitrogen oxide emissions (which affect the health of people nearby).
Fuel is only expensive in Europe because it's subject to special taxes [0]. Emissions standards are also (until recently with the scandals) relatively lax for diesel vehicles [1].
EDIT: also if you look at the fuel prices link, notice the production cost of gasoline is generally lower than that of diesel in most countries, but after taxes diesel is cheaper.
at least in france, the tax rules based on horsepower and co2 were strongly favourable to diesel cars (as they emit less co2 and have better performance at similar hp), which led to insane stuff like putting a diesel engine in a smart car...
Well, the green party never advocated for using coal instead. Of course, you cannot abandon nuclear power, then destroy your rising solar industry, then destroy your wind industry (first onshore, than offshore) and finally also abandon coal and gas. While playing games with biogas & hydropower and reducing support for alternative heating systems like wood pellets. All of that seems to be the current plan of the conservative party. The green party had a plan and it was on track until about 2010, 5 years after they lost power. Since then, its all gone down. But blaming that on a party in opposition is at minimum unfair, if not stupid. All at the cost of more than a hundred thousand industry jobs.
> the green party never advocated for using coal instead ... blaming that on a party in opposition
They had the choice of achieving an exit from nuclear power or from coal power. They chose the former when they pushed through the Atomkonsens in 2002 when they were, in fact, a governing party.
Now Germany has lost pretty much exactly as much power generation from early shutdown of nuclear plants as they are running in terms of coal power generation.
They were a governing party with 1/6 of the votes in a coalition with a party that to this day delays the exit from coal because 'jobs'. In an economic crisis when the word greenhouse gases (and not yet climate change) was not prevalent at all. In retrospect, you are probably right. But at the time that simply was impossible.
> Now Germany has lost pretty much exactly as much power generation from early shutdown of nuclear plants as they are running in terms of coal power generation.
And exactly that is not because of the green party. The green parties program from 2005 outlined the end of coal subventions for 2012. The status quo is 2038.
It doesn't matter how many votes they had (1 would be enough). They were necessary for forming the coalition, therefore they could extort other larger coalition parties to give in to their demands.
Yes, this cannot be overstated. You can be pro or anti nuclear power, that is actually not the important part. The Green Party was (at most) the smaller partner in the governing coalition, but only for a short time (8y) in the last.. 40 years and as patall wrote, solar and wind has been completely sabotaged by the leading parties since then and reading the news you get a feeling that indeed the automotive lobby is one of the key drivers (pun not intended) of our environmental plans.
The green party is part of the government here in Sweden and the current energy plan is to use renewables when weather conditions is optimal and then to use in non-optimal weather conditions:
Subsidized gas and oil under the umbrella term "Reserve energy plan".
Import energy from coal, gas an oil power plants from neighboring countries and expand the capacity to import more during periods of high demand.
It only been months since the last public debate between the green party spoke person and the opposition, and in that they reiterated that the plan for the future is to use fossil fuels as the only economical viable option compared to nuclear for periods of non-optimal weather conditions. Nuclear is too expensive compared to fossil fuels. In some later debate articles they further expanded that the plan is to use fossil fuels until the technology to create green hydrogen has been made cheap enough to be economical viable (date undetermined). If I remember right they cited the German green party as inspiration, through I could be wrong on that part.
We do not have to think about weather, even the day-night cycle produces very strong differences in energy demand. Now what does the nuclear power house France do to counter this change in demand? Hint: it is (to 99%) not to regulate nuclear power. E.g https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&...
There are limited sources of variable energy like some hydro, biomass, storage or ... (some) fossils. Nuclear is very bad as a variable energy source and therefore, aside for nuclear carriers, nowhere the only source of power. It would be nice if it were, but it is not.
> Now what does the nuclear power house France do to counter this change in demand? Hint: it is (to 99%) not to regulate nuclear power.
Nukes are baseload, you don't vary those plants' output when you don't have to, especially when you can use the consumption downtime to refill the pumped hydro.
> Nuclear is very bad as a variable energy source and therefore, aside for nuclear carriers, nowhere the only source of power. It would be nice if it were, but it is not.
Literally nobody but you even hinted that nukes could (let alone should) be the sole power source.
Parent suggested that Sweden would not need fossil fuels when using nuclear power to stabilize their grid. And I pointed out that not even France is doing that. You are right, there are some days where they vary the plants output up to 50% of the daily change in demand. Still, even in the days you picked, they are running 5% on gas. Even though, as I understand it, they have enough nuclear plants available to reach 100% at all times. Why is France praised in this forum while the parent criticizes Swedens green party for wanting to do the same: using fossil energy as a backup?
To explain why Sweden wouldn't need fossil fuels if they had more base load, while France has a bit harder time to do the same, is that Sweden has a significant higher ratio of hydro power. The water reserves can do a pretty good job at stabilizing a power grid. Without a lot of base load you do however need a lot of capacity to cover periods of non-optimal weather conditions, and the combination of increased demand and decommission of nuclear power plants has managed to make demands exceed well past what the Swedish water reserves can produce. As such we now have a focus on fossil fuels to solve an issue we haven't had in the past, with the green party steering.
Why do I criticizes Swedens green party for wanting to use fossil energy as a backup? Pretty simple answer to that, and I will use an old green party slogan to do it. Keep it in the ground! We won't reach the climate goals if we burn fossil fuel for power and heat. The green party should have been the last ones arguing that we must burn fossil fuels because the alternative cost too much money. Climate scientists has known for a while that we must keep fossil fuel in the ground, but what hope is there if even the green movement is advocating to digging it up and burning in order to save a buck?
It was killed as an easy boon for idiotic environmentalist groups (the german green party is one of the few which at times reached relevant levels of representation), which have done more against the environment than for it. It which was also supported by local trade groups as Germany has huge deposits of lignite (whuch is basically the worst coal available).
In no small part following greenpeace’s nonsensical switch from military to civilian nukes in a bid for relevance most environmentalist groups and green parties hate nukes with a passion.
Decommissioning plants you could keep in running order is financially idiotic since you’ve already performed the vast majority of the investment.